Jack’s Surgery

Yesterday Jack had his dental surgery. I dropped him off at around 8:00 AM and was a nervous wreck all day. Not that I thought anything bad would happen, I just worried. You know, like “moms” do.

He had x-rays taken, and 14 of his teeth were extracted in addition to the two that fell out on their own before he went in for the procedure. Many were abscessed. The remaining teeth were cleaned, and the vet said we’ll just monitor his remaining teeth over the next couple of years.

The above photo is a diagram of a typical cat’s teeth. The ones in blue indicate the teeth that were extracted from Jack’s mouth, or had fallen out before the procedure. He still has quite a few teeth left.

Jack had an injection of antibiotics, and was sent home with five days’ worth of pain medication (luckily, it’s liquid, so that makes it easier). He was really, really dopey when he got home. The first photo in this post is shortly after he got home. He had that dazed look on his face for a few hours. The blue bandage was to cover the injection site for his IVs. I thought it was really cute. He hated it, and kept trying to fling his leg around to try and get it off.

I folded up a fuzzy blanket for him in my bedroom and let him rest up. He loves fuzzy blankets.

Poor little guy.

This is Jack at about 9:30 PM last night. He was so sleepy.

He was hungry at about 11:30 PM last night, so he had his first meal post-surgery. He needs to eat soft foods for a couple of weeks while his mouth heals, but he definitely doesn’t mind! He loves soft food. He ate normally today, too.

He gets a little dopey from the pain medication. He’s really cuddly and kind of rolls around on the floor. I can’t help but laugh. I even made this artistic interpretation of it:

They also took a urine sample yesterday, since they couldn’t get one from him a couple of weeks ago when they took a blood sample. Everything came back normal. They took a biopsy of his chin because the bone is kind of abnormal, and the vet wanted to rule out any tumors or other issues. She thinks it’s related to the swelling and abscesses in his teeth, but I guess I’ll know for sure early next week when the test results come back.

I’m relieved that the problem teeth are finally out of his mouth. I know they were annoying him, and I’m sure he was in pain but just didn’t show it (because he’s badass, apparently). Hopefully he’ll feel much better.